Boston University president Robert A. Brown has approved gender neutral housing as an option for most students, allowing the school to begin offering it as early as the upcoming fall semester, BU said today in a statement.

“This is about empowering students to make choices about how they live and giving them a greater measure of control over their college experience,” Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said in the statement. “This is really about your choice of who you live with. Your preference about gender and how you perceive it is really not our concern.”

To date, a student could choose another roommate of the same sex, the statement said. But now two or more students will now be permitted to share a bedroom, a suite, or an apartment in certain buildings across campus, regardless of their gender.

The statement said that in adopting the new policy, BU joins at least 90 colleges and universities nationwide.

In a 2012 survey conducted by the BU student government, nearly 2,000 students supported gender neutral housing. Approximately 500 students said they would choose the option themselves.

Per usual, don’t read the comments, they’re full of homophobia, transphobia, and hate. But, this is actual progress. I swear I never though I’d see the day when BU would do this. Granted, BU will probably charge more for this housing, but it’s still progress.

You have to understand, this is the University that, under Silber, was more concerned with student’s sex lives than it was with education. The quote Silber made, to the media, was, “It is not our job to provide a `love nest’ for our students.” This was in response to the extremely restrictive policies on students being able to visit one another in on campus dorms and the hoops you had to go through in order to be able to have opposite gender family members be able to visit and sleep on your floor. That’s right, family members. I wish I was kidding.

I can’t tell you how much more freeing it would have been to have been able to choose my roommate(s) based on my ability to get along with them and not to have been restricted to choosing from only half, excuse me, 55ish%*, of the student body. Then there were my gay friends. Some of them were assigned living situations that were downright terrifying. This would have obviated the problem.

So spin, Silber, spin. You were a relic when you were alive. BU is moving on just fine without you now that you’re dead.

~Kelly

*But what is most fascinating — and distressing — about the current argument in support of single-sex education is that it flips the Victorian justification on its head: it is the men, not the women, who need to be protected from the opposite sex. Today’s single-sex-education proponents claim that boys learn much better without girls present. Why? Well, because girls are a sexual distraction. Last month, Boston University president John Silber spoke candidly about the need for his school to limit its enrollment of women because the composition of the student body had shifted to about 60 percent women and 40 percent men. The problem? With so many women around, the male students at BU cease to be gentlemanly. (An odd theory on many counts — the least of which is that BU has a reputation for frat parties, beer busts, and an all-around rowdiness that predates any imbalance in the sex ratio.) Emphasis mine. -Kelly

3 thoughts on “John Silber is spinning in his grave”

“Well, because girls are a sexual distraction.”
This sounds… like exactly the same reason fundamentalist religions separate genders, whether it be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or perhaps others I’ve not studied enough to have an informed opinion on.

Seriously, an educational institution allowed someone with this opinion to speak for them? Is this Seminary/Saudi Arabia or Boston, MA?

I know, right? That man was a disgrace to American Education. I know he had a Ph.D. and studied philosophy, blah blah, but his ideas about education were more about building a business, not about what was best for the students.

BU is the only university I know of that has a group of alumni actively dedicated to never giving money to the institution, ever. It’s called NOPE, Not One Penny Ever and most of the people in it are there because of Silber. He may be 6 feet under, but his legacy lives on and so they’ll never get a penny of my money.

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DISCLAIMER

The opinions, posts, photos, and written materials expressed herein are ours and ours alone. They are not those of our families, employers, alma maters, former employers, knitting circles, future employers, former roommates, friends, or our pets unless explicitly stated otherwise.

So, please. Laugh a little.

WARRANTY

Management is not responsible for personal injury resulting from sitting too close to the soprano, laughing too long, or splorting milk out of your nose on to the keyboard. No returns or refunds. Store credit only. Read at your own risk. Void where taxed, prohibited, restricted, or humor impaired. No user serviceable parts inside. Please ask a parent before calling. Made in the USA. WARNING: contains small parts and thoughtful, political, and LOL-worthy humor, product not intended for children under 3 years. If not completely satisfied please click here.